In an unusual move, U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin wrote on Tuesday to the University of Phoenix’s accreditor, urging it to “take great care in considering the integrity and quality” of the for-profit giant’s programs during a coming accreditation review. Senator Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, has been a frequent critic of proprietary colleges’ dependence on federal funds. In his letter to Sylvia Manning, president of the Higher Learning Commission of the the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, he noted that the university had been sued by several states and investigated by the U.S. Department of Education, and he said that its practices warrant “careful scrutiny.”

Nineteen students and alumni have sued the University of California at Davis in federal court, arguing that its police force’s use of pepper spray in a demonstration last November violated their constitutional rights, the Associated Press reports. The incident came amid international “Occupy” protests and, documented in online videos, generated considerable outrage, scrutiny of campus police officers, and numerous investigations and inquiries. In a similar lawsuit filed in November, a group of students and other protesters argue that top officials at the University of California at Berkeley violated their First and Fourth Amendment rights by breaking up an Occupy Berkeley demonstration.

Indiana University at South Bend has fired a tenured associate professor of law and society for engaging in what the university said was “serious personal and professional misconduct,” according to the South Bend Tribune. The university did not disclose details of the alleged misconduct to the newspaper, other than to say that the firing was “primarily based on representations he made at the time of his hiring and subsequently during his tenure at Indiana University.” The professor, Otis B. Grant, is appealing his dismissal. He was penalized by the university four years ago, the newspaper said, after students alleged that he had used foul language in class, canceled classes, and dismissed two students from a course without due process. He was also accused of allowing someone who was not a university employee to grade students’ work and to get access to students’ academic records. Mr….

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A Republican-sponsored bill that would bar graduate research assistants at Michigan’s public universities from unionizing has been approved by the State Senate. Consideration of the bill coincides with debates over whether research assistants at the University of Michigan should be classified as students, not as employees entitled to collective-bargaining rights. The bill, which now heads to the House, threatens to upend a case pending before an administrative-law judge, who is scheduled to deliver her recommendation to the Michigan Employment Relations Commission on March 13.

A former student at Jackson Community College, in Michigan, will receive $40,000 from the Jackson County government and an undisclosed amount from the college to settle a lawsuit over his being forced to undergo a mental evaluation, the Jackson Citizen Patriot reports. The student, Michael Oliver, sought damages from a 2011 incident in which police officers handcuffed him and took him to a local hospital for the evaluation. The incident followed complaints by Mr. Oliver, who is black, of racial harassment in the classroom. College employees construed his statements as threats and reported him to the police. Mr. Oliver denied he had threatened anyone.

Less than a year after vetoing a similar bill, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona has signed into law a measure that will give a tax break to the parent companies of the University of Phoenix, Grand Canyon University, and other companies, like call centers, that sell services to out-of-state customers. Under the new law signed by the Republican governor, the college companies won’t pay Arizona income tax on revenues from online-education services they sell to out-of-state students.

Community colleges in California, already forced to cut enrollments when more students than ever are seeking to attend, may have to eliminate classes and lay off faculty members as the colleges struggle to absorb an unexpected $149-million budget shortfall, the Los Angeles Times reports. On top of slashed state funds, California’s 112 community colleges are having to deal with lower-than-expected revenue from student fees and from local property taxes. The state’s public colleges and universities have faced a myriad of budget troubles over the past few years, largely from cuts in state support and shortfalls in expected revenue.

A longtime mathematics instructor at Boston and Suffolk Universities who was accused of helping her son run a methamphetamine lab out of their home was cleared of the charges last week after more than two dozen academics signed a letter on her behalf, The Boston Globe reported. Irina Kristy, 74, has been on administrative leave from the two institutions for three months, and she hopes to be reinstated. Her 30-year-old son, Grigory Genkin, has pleaded not guilty to the same charges she faced. The academics’ letter to the prosecutors said Ms. Kristy left her native Russia in 1985 after facing Soviet persecution because of her human-rights activism. The letter said her long work hours and “naïve respect for the privacy rights of her son all contributed to this unfortunate situation.’’

At a joint conference in Washington to discuss educational and cultural cooperation between the United States and Iraq, the U.S. State Department and the Iraqi ministry of higher education pledged to continue to work together to rebuild Iraq’s education system. “If the occupation left a bad taste, our hope is that this cooperation will help erase those ideas,” said Ali Al-Adeeb, Iraq’s higher-education minister, adding that “the only way a country can get out of suffering and backwardness is through higher education.”

Ann Stock, the assistant secretary for educational and cultural affairs at the State Department, noted that there are now more than 600 Iraqi students studying in the United States, due in part to several Iraqi government scholarship programs. And several U.S. and Iraqi universities are building linkages in fields such as biology and computer science. “We’ve long…

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(Updated, 11:30 p.m.) Three new lawsuits have been filed on behalf of colleges challenging an Obama administration policy mandating that employees of religious institutions like schools, colleges, and hospitals have access to contraceptive services free of charge. The Alliance Defense Fund filed suits on behalf of Geneva College, in Beaver Falls, Pa., which is affiliated with the Reformed Presbyterian Church, and Louisiana College, a Southern Baptist institution in Pineville, La. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed a suit on behalf of Ave Maria University, a conservative Catholic institution near Naples, Fla.

All three lawsuits follow the president’s announcement on February 10 that religious employers would not have to pay for this coverage, a policy change that sought to accommodate the objections of some religious groups. The Becket Fund had previously filed challenges on…

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